The Gargoyle Hunters

by John Freeman Gill

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not exist without the love and support of my wife, Julina Tatlock: first reader, first responder—first everything, really. The help of several other early readers was also indispensable in refining this story: Samantha Gillison, Hilary Reyl, Alex Coulter, and Sarah Burnes. The deft hand of my editor, Jordan Pavlin, was essential in the final sculpting of these gargoyles. My agent, Julia Kardon, provided valuable feedback and passionate representation.

  I am grateful to my parents, Jill Gill and Ardian Gill, whose love of words and belief in the value of making things made me what I am and this book what it is. In addition, the passion for New York’s streetscape that my mother instilled in me is evident on every page. I am also thankful for the love and invigorating silliness of my wondrous children, Arden, Cormac, and Declan. And I am grateful to my sisters, Tracy and Claudia, for their unflagging support and keen eyes for period detail.

  Ivan C. Karp, the founder of the Anonymous Arts Recovery Society, and Marilynn Gelfman Karp were pivotal figures in the development of this book. At their home and at their jewel box of a museum in Charlotteville, New York, Ivan regaled me with tales of gargoyle hunting and introduced me to scores of the myriad gargoyles saved by him and his merry band of scavengers back in the day. Of all the 1960s and ’70s rescuers of New York architectural sculpture I interviewed, he was the most influential. Marilynn, over dinner with Ivan and Julina on West Broadway and later at the Karps’ SoHo loft, introduced me to her concept of Poignant Repairs and showed me her collection, several items of which appear in this novel, mingled with objects of my invention. (Interested readers should investigate the concept further in her wonderful book, In Flagrante Collecto, from which some details of Zev’s collection are drawn.) Timothy Allanbrook, a preservation architect and gargoyle wrangler who spent several years restoring the façade of the Woolworth Building beginning in the 1970s, was extremely generous with his time and expertise, sharing unpublished information and photographs of that restoration and walking my characters step-by-step around the crown of that remarkable building. Katherine Allen of Allen Architectural Metals and her colleagues, led by Chris Lacey, were equally generous in allowing a stranger off the street to climb with them up the side of a TriBeCa landmark to inspect the piece-by-piece dismantling of a nineteenth-century cast-iron building. New York architectural history authority Christopher Gray generously vetted the manuscript. Susan Weber-Stoger, a demographic expert at Queens College, analyzed 1970s census data for me, providing me with a clearer understanding of the landscape of my youth. Avram Ludwig joined me on a sea voyage to scout a certain untamed island off the Atlantic Coast, where he gamely helped me bushwhack through the forest, braving an empire of mosquitoes and poison ivy, to explore the colossal rusted carcass of an abandoned factory devastated by fire.

  Some of the research that went into this novel was conducted for a feature published in The Atlantic that was kindly underwritten by James Bennet and edited by Timothy Lavin. Additional research was performed in the course of roaming New York for the City section of The New York Times, under the leadership of Connie Rosenblum, who gave me the great gift of letting me go wherever my curiosity took me. I have generally taken pains to respect history in this book but have occasionally compressed time or adjusted other elements to serve my purposes as a novelist.

  Cast-Iron Architecture in America, by Margot Gayle and Carol Gayle, and The Skyscraper and the City, by Gail Fenske, were important sources. The works of Andrew Scott Dolkart, Oliver E. Allen, and Susan Tunick were also very helpful, as were interviews with Margot, Andrew, Susan, and Roy Suskin, manager of the Woolworth Building, who provided me with unpublished restoration diagrams and photographs, and guided me and my characters around the upper reaches of the Gothic cloudscraper. I also relied upon conversations, in person and online, among fellow lamenters of New York’s incessant self-demolition.

  My gratitude goes out as well to Anne and Bill Tatlock, Simeon Lagodich, Anna Hannon, Annie Proulx, Eleanor Gill Milner, Colum McCann, Gretchen Rubin, Mary Morris, Ethan Crenson, Amanda Alic, Paul Minden, Sebastian Heath, Alex Wright, Doug Liman, Michael Feigin, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Roger and Rose Marie Hawke, Mary Ann Blase Howard, Marika Brussel, Robert Balder, the Brooklyn Writers Space, Scott Adkins, Erin Courtney, Jennifer Cody Epstein, Bettina Schrewe, Paul Slovak, Joanna Hershon, Hal Bromm, Mary Evans, Mary Gaule, Carol Willis, the Gill & Lagodich Fine Period Frame Gallery, Sonny Mehta, Nicholas Thomson, Carol Devine Carson, Kristen Bearse, Paul Bogaards, Ellen Feldman, Christine Gillespie, Katie Schoder, Sara Eagle, Anne-Lise Spitzer, and everyone at Knopf.

  It is important to me, too, to toast the inspiring English and writing teachers who nurtured my love of language and story from elementary school to graduate school: Peg Summers and Carole France, both of whom saw something in me when I was a child and graciously took me under their wings; Lucy Rosenthal; and Mary La Chapelle. Thanks are also due to John F. Kelly for lending Griffin his red Puma Clydes.

  Lastly, I extend my deepest thanks to the anonymous artists who came over from Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and incised their visions into New York, transforming the streetscape of my hometown into a marvelously quirky public art gallery. Their imaginations fired mine.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  John Freeman Gill is a native New Yorker and longtime New York Times contributor whose work has been anthologized in The New York Times Book of New York and More New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of The New York Times. He is the architecture and real estate editor of Avenue magazine, for which he writes “Edifice Complex,” a monthly column exploring the biographies of historic New York City buildings and their occupants. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Observer, Washington Monthly, the International Herald Tribune, Premiere, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. A summa cum laude graduate of Yale University, where he won two prizes and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, he received an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence College. He lives in New York City with his wife, three children, and a smattering of gargoyles.

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  An Alfred A. Knopf Reading Guide

  The Gargoyle Hunters by John Freeman Gill

  The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s conversation about The Gargoyle Hunters, John Freeman Gill’s poignant and elegiac love letter to a lost New York—the story of one young man navigating the city in all of its grandeur and grit.

  Discussion Questions

  1. Discuss the significance of the epigraphs that open The Gargoyle Hunters. How do these quotes set the tone for the novel?

  2. In the prologue, the narrator includes a quote from his sister, Quigley, summarizing her thoughts on the changing landscape of New York and explaining why she has decided to leave the city: “I’m tired of being homesick in my own hometown.” How does this expression of grief for the city’s shifts and changes echo throughout the novel? How does Griffin’s sense of nostalgia for New York differ from Quigley’s? From that of their parents’?

  3. On this page, Griffin’s recollection of a party from his childhood concludes with “My father was no longer beside me.” This line appears again on this page, in the final moments Griffin shares withhis father. Why do you think the author chose to bookend the novel with this stark imagery? How do these two incidents help to shape readers’ understanding of Griffin’s father?

  4. The city of New York is arguably as significant a character as any other in The Gargoyle Hunters. How would you describe the New York of this era? How does Gill address the city’s crime while also imbuing the text with a sense of nostalgia for its former grittiness?

  5. The relationship between father and son is a significant aspect of The Gargoyle Hunters. How would you describe Griffin’s relationship with his father at the beginning of the novel? Ho
w do their various quests to “liberate” architectural wonders bring them closer together? When does Griffin’s trust in his father begin to waver? How does he conquer the anxiety he feels toward his father’s illicit actions?

  6. When does Griffin first “see” the beauty in New York’s crumbling façades for himself? Discuss his first attempt to liberate a piece of a building. What motivates him to do this? What was his emotional state during and after this experience? As the novel progresses, are his solo missions driven by necessity or compulsion?

  7. How would you characterize Griffin’s mother? Her parenting methods? As the novel progresses, how does Griffin’s relationship with his mother evolve?

  8. In chapter 6, Griffin’s mother recounts the incident in which her “charismatic, self-absorbed, keenly observant husband” (this page) took their infant daughter to an abandoned building site in order to liberate one of his treasures. Discuss this scene. What does this anecdote reveal about Nick as a character? About his relationship with his wife? About his conception of parenting?

  9. How would you characterize Griffin’s home life in the brownstone? Describe his interactions with the boarders who live there.

  10. Discuss Griffin’s relationship with Dani. How does Gill capture the sense of headiness that accompanies young love? How does the theft of the Laing papers evolve from an innocent act into one with much greater import?

  11. The New York of The Gargoyle Hunters is a dark, forbidding place. How does Gill create tension throughout the novel? How does he play upon his readers’ sense of discomfort or uneasiness?

  12. The Gargoyle Hunters is a nuanced look at adolescence in all of its glory and tumult. Describe how Gill captures the excitement and the anxiety of these formative years. How does Griffin occupy the liminal space between child and adult? When does he begin to develop a sense of confidence in himself? When is he most unsure of his place in the world?

  13. The arrests of Zev and Curtis change Griffin’s understanding of his father’s business. Discuss the scene in which he visits Curtis during the search for his father. What does he realize about the extent of his own problems in visiting Curtis and his family?

  14. Griffin’s journey to New Jersey to find his father is rife with tension and uncertainty. Were you surprised by the reveal of his father’s location? How would you describe their final hours together? Discuss Griffin’s fear of lightning and the childhood memory he recounts about going to his father for comfort during a storm. What is the import of that scene? What does it tell us about the nature of their relationship?

  15. Gentrification is a dominant topic of conversation in the twenty-first century. How does The Gargoyle Hunters explore the effects of gentrification? How would you characterize Griffin’s feelings toward gentrification at the novel’s conclusion?

  16. In the final chapter of the book, Griffin includes New York City locations and businesses that will always belong to him and his wife—every one of which has vanished or changed form. What does the inclusion of these places assert about place and memory? If you are familiar with New York City, did you recognize any of these places, or have specific memories attached to them? If you aren’t, could you relate to the idea of a changing landscape in your own hometown?

  Suggested Reading

  City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg

  Just Kids by Patti Smith

  The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

  Time and Again by Jack Finney

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